Twelve years after declaring independence from Soviet rule, some Georgians are literally still in the dark about democracy and freedom. Understandably, western idealism is cold comfort when you can’t turn the lights on. America’s AES Corp., the largest independent owner of power assets in the world, has purchased the electricity distribution company in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. AES manager Piers Lewis must now train the formerly communist populace that, in this new world, customers pay for their electricity. Meanwhile the Georgians – everyone from meter readers to the Energy Minister himself – devise ever more clever ways to steal it. In an environment where political assassinations and al-Qaeda turfings are as commonplace as street riots and blackouts, the link between electricity and power has never been so plain. Filmmaker Paul Devlin examines in stark detail the plight of a people as they build a nation from the rubble of Soviet collapse. 

Myrocia Watamaniuk.